Keiko Kitagawa plays a woman who loses her true love and her memory in "Matataki"

by Chris MaGee

If you have a Kleenex box nearby you better grab it. Tokyograph is reporting on a new film that seems to be designed to make people weep. Titled "Matataki" the film stars Keiko Kitagawa (Handsome Suit, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift) as a young woman named Izumi whose boyfriend dies (played by Masaki Okada) in a motorcycle accident. The shock of losing of her true love causes her to blank out all memory of the fatal accident, and it's up to Izumi's lawyer (Nene Otsuka) to help her client regain those last minutes of her boyfriend's life. That's the strange part of this whole project, which is based on a novel by Len Kawahara. If you're trying to recover suppressed memories you don't tend to run out and get yourself a lawyer, you get yourself a shrink... unless the whole plot revolves around one of those personal injury lawyers that advertise on TV. Maybe.

"Matataki" is being directed by Itsumichi Isomura, the man who brought us the the abysmal 1996 transgender romance "Close Your Eyes and Hold Me", while Misa Shimizu, Tomorowo Taguchi, and Kin Sugai will be rounding out the supporting cast. Japanese audiences can take their Kleenex boxes to the theatres in June when "Matataki" is slated to be released in theatres.